


Primarchs of the Tarot

by HarlequinR



Category: Warhammer - All Media Types, Warhammer 40.000
Genre: 30k, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Primarchs, Warhammer 30k - Freeform, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 10:08:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20890373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarlequinR/pseuds/HarlequinR





	Primarchs of the Tarot

Archtype: Temperance

Numeration: The IVth Legion  
  
Primogenitor: Hanno the Traveler, Fleetmaster of the IVth, Son of the Stars, the Lost Son.  
  
Cognomen: The Voidfarers, previously Imperial Hawks, Blacksail Legion - derogatory/suppressed.  
  
Observed Strategic Tendencies: Void combat and boarding actions, rapid orbital assault, strategic strikes, long term independent operations.  
  
Noteworthy Domains: Primary tithe rights to the solar mid-world ranges, multiple void-bound tributaries across the galaxy including beyond Imperial borders.  
  
  
When even the greatest of Mankind’s champions can fall victim to its lowest instincts, the question is asked, ‘what is loyalty, and how might it be recognised when there is no truth by which to measure it?’. It is the greatest tragedy of all that arises in treachery’s wake that even those who would be thought of as steadfast and loyal under any pressure have at least some measure of doubt laid on them. What then of those for whom doubt is already held, and have long been distant from kith and kin?  
  
  
Origins: Birds of Prey  
Along with its brother Legions, the IV was founded during the later stages of the Unification Wars fought on Terra, and in contrast to the hearsay and rumour that defined much of their later history, the records of Legion’s early years remain detailed and extensive. The last of the Legions to be established, first hand accounts document the intake of recruits that formed the initial proto-Legion as coming from the orbital hab-plates and trans-atmospheric stations that crowned the throneworld, and mention notably the founding being deliberately held until these long recalcitrant states had been brought into compliance. The Emperor’s foresight in drawing the Legion’s recruits from them was clear to see given the geneseed compatibility problems that would shape its future recruitment practices, indeed until the expansion of the Emperor’s domain beyond the surface of Terra it would remain the smallest of the Legions.  
  
The limited numbers available to the IVth would prove little hindrance to their ability to persecute the enemies of Unification however. Employing the same martial techniques that had served well the near-void communities throughout the Age of Strife, they struck with speed and precision via high altitude insertion, wiping out isolated bodies of troops, raiding supply depots, and crippled key infrastructure. Deployed in support and ahead of larger Imperial hosts, commonly only at company strength, they could arrive, complete their objective, and be gone before any organised response to their presence could be organised. Combat honours for battlefields across Terra being testament to the far flung locations the Legion was deployed in to support the Emperor’s mortal armies. They also speak of the importance placed in the Legion’s role ensuring the clean end of these last few conflicts, despite the comparatively small nature of the battles and lateness in the overall campaign to unify Terra beneath the Emperor’s rule. Post-combat analysis on repeated occasions spoke highly of their situational awareness and capacity for both swift problem solving and decisive action, on the back of which the Legion would favoured for situations where collateral damage needed to be minimised, or narrowly focused objectives were required for victory.  
  
It was both the technique of applying sudden, precise aerial strikes and widespread use of the iconic stormbird that led one Strategos of the Byzant Janizars to comment after the Batrian campaign, ‘_The screaming of afterburners was still be in our ears and already they were upon them, the Emperor’s own hunting hawks swooping for the kill_’. The cognomen inspired would quickly spread into widespread casual usage, with companies of the now titled Imperial Hawks incorporating variations of the theme into their heraldry. Like their namesake however, the detached aloofness and clannishness displayed by the Legion’s warriors kept them distant from the rest of the Emperor’s forces. Even other Legions active in the same warzones found them to be a group apart, amplified by the consistently swift departure they made after their part in the battle was completed.  
  
The Pacification of Luna, remembered even now as one of the great successes of the IVth, represents the primary exemplar of their methods at this time, and cemented their reputation with Imperial High Command. The first Legion to be equipped with fully sealed and void-hardened warplate, the companies deployed would deftly bypass any attempt to force a confrontation on the Seleran Cults’ own terms, instead using their familiarity with the systems employed by the lunar hab-vaults to trigger safety lock-downs and environmental fail-safe protocols. With the overlapping contingencies built in to safeguard the facilities turned against them, the Cult warbreeds were largely neutralised while critical infrastructure was seized and leaders slain. Surrender came within hours of the Imperial Hawks’ arrival.  
  
_Endless Skies and Wandering Stars_  
While its successes within the immediate Terran sphere were certainly worthy victories, it was not here that the legion would fully come into its legacy and character. Growing steadily more outnumbered by the other Legions, the Imperial Hawks were equally as ill-suited in nature to the attritional campaigns of conquest on Venus or the gruelling cleansings of the Jovian and Saturnine moons’ xenohold infestations. Conversely, they quickly began to display an affinity for naval operations and void warfare in all its forms, an extension of the skills that had made them so effective on their Terran deployments and the source of the wide cognomen of ‘space marines’ applied to the Legions as a whole.  
  
Beginning with counter attacks and punitive actions against pirates targeting Terra, Luna and the early high-orbital facilities in construction there, they progressed to guarding the flanks of the first invasion fleets, then launching boarding assaults of their own against the nearest outlaw stations and the vessels operating from them. These unwholesome warrens lay ahead of the inner worlds’ orbital paths and had long been a sporadic threat to more civilised fragments of Humanity, the station-states and floating principalities in orbit of Terra having fought off their advances on numerous occasions preceding Unification. In the ships and habitats seized, the Imperial Hawks began to reap a bounty of their own, beginning a shift in the tides of fortune against the stellar corsairs and signalled their eventual doom.  
  
It was a peculiarity of the genetic legacy inherited by the Legion that while its geneseed proved difficult, at best, to marry with the bloodlines of Terra, acceptance rates among the voidborn proved nothing less than impressive, equal to the most prolific of their sibling Legions. The initial influx of recruits from the inner system pirates provided the Legion with the means to launch larger and more distant actions as the Emperor’s expansion into the solar system advanced, developing a ruthless enthusiasm repeatedly mentioned by those following in their wake as being at odds with the reserved nature seen in the past. The Imperial Hawks thus grew in parallel with the Emperor’s dominion and their own deployments, companies swelling to chapters in short order as they overcame the increasingly degenerate inhabitants of the solar wastes as they moved further out from the sun. At Ceres ↀ they took every youth under thirteen years, on the broken Pillar of Dawn an entire generation was given over in tribute to the Emperor, every male less than 10,000 ship cycles old found among the Trojan Raiders was taken for screening.  
  
When Jupiter and Saturn embraced the expanding Terran state, the void-clans provided whole chapters of new legionnaires alongside the vessels produced by their skilled shipwrights. Regrouping around the bright constellations of shipyard and dry-dock, the rapidly growing Imperial Hawks struck out with abandon at the petty empires and darkholds of the outer worlds and Kuiper Belt. Equipped, with no little irony, as reaver formations, they committed scores of masterful boarding actions and surgical raids, returning to civilisation with odd technological relics, the surrender of compliant habitats, and holds of children taken for geneseed implantation. With them, starting from the first youths taken from in-system pirates, these new legionnaires brought fresh perspectives and skills to the Legion’s combat doctrine, born of the drawn out conflicts fought in the cold depths of the solar system by those that lived over uncounted generations there. A new hard facet also emerged in the insular habits of the Legion, an edge of disdain against the outsider, and cold instinct of survival.  
  
In place of the large expeditionary fleets or small detachment forces that the other Legions were organised into as the Great Crusade swept into the galaxy, the Imperial Hawks would occupy a middle ground as roaming hunter-nomad formations based on those that emerged over the course of fighting within the Solar Domain. Each was an essentially self-sustaining warbands of around chapter strength, contingents of the Legion roaming in loose skirmish formations light years across, gathering or dispersing as needed. Predominantly given leave to harrow the trails of voidfaring xenos and follow rumours of extra-planetary Human remnants as they saw fit, the Imperial Hawks travelled an eccentric path across the stars, gathering a narrow, if still respectable, list of compliances as the went.  
  
The inheritance of the Legion, be it from their founding intake or garnered practice, proved invaluable on the occasions where they came into contact with these voidfaring branches of Humanity, granting an insight that remained unmatched for the entire Crusade. In diplomacy they built on the sense of shared origins and foundational experiences, while at war the impact of the destruction or control of key infrastructure was a well understood source of leveraged to bring about surrender without drawn out conflict. From the isolated station-state of Pier in its lonely orbit to the sprawling wreck-reefs of the Consus Drift, islands of Imperial rule began to emerge in the dark sea of the galaxy, serving as way-stations for Imperial fleets and merchant caravans. Each also served as a source of recruitment, with whole companies raised from the Legion’s aggressive recruitment.  
  
Honours for space-hulk sterilisation missions and the culling of pirate fleets, a task always approached with a particular vigour by the Legion, also began to appear with increasing regularity as the Crusade expanded past the Segmentum Solar. In both cases the Imperial Hawks often claimed rights to the recovered vessels, in addition to any youths of age for induction that were found on them. This later practice remained a sticking point for some, though if the Emperor had any concerns on the matter, they remained private. On other occasions, elements would be seconded to aid in the compliance of resistant worlds where their particular skills were required, carrying out the swift paced tactical strikes and drop assaults that many of the ‘Old Hundred’ Terran regiments of the Imperial Army still remembered them for. When contesting the worlds of Human pocket empires that denied compliance, the Legion’s talent for void warfare would be utilised in both defence and attack, with Chapter Masters regularly being granted authority of significant naval assets for the duration. For all the successes achieved and honours gained, the idiosyncrasies of their character continued to win them few friends or lasting allies, an issue that had by the time Segmentum Solar was secured began to seep into their relationship with several branches of the Imperial war effort.  
  
_Carrion Crows_  
The character of the Legion, always given towards a curt directness towards outsiders and cold enthusiasm of action, was observed to steadily worsen as it expanded and dispersed further. During the irregular visits made to established supply posts by the predation-fleets, they had became known for a near disregard held towards the finer points of scheduling or procedure, sweeping through and departing in a manner closer to wholesale looting than organised resupply. Blamed, as many perceived faults would be, on the specific range of recruits taken in by them, such reports and observations as made it to the War Council reignited concerns dating back to the very first intake of recruits from beyond Terra. “_The darkholds’ cold-souled and hungry sons_” as one especially graphic commentary from an early Remembrancer would state it.  
  
In response the Imperial Hawks, ever aloof and caring little for outside opinion, largely ignored the criticism, deciding that success spoke for itself, though some degrees of isolationism and malicious compliance did emerge on limited occasion. Retrospective analysis appears to indicate that a negative feedback loop was almost certainly beginning to emerge between the Legion and its critics, leading to, among other terms, the emergence of ‘Blacksail Legion’ in referring to them. While its use was quickly censured as corrosive to Crusade moral, it did linger within the private circulation of some circles.  
  
The most visible evidence of deterioration in the relationship between the Legion and, principally, the Departmento Munitorum, could be seen in the growing use of internally produced sub-patterns of wargear. A development of necessity by the Legion’s extensive artificer bands as the periods between resupply extended, the experience of a legionnaire could often be told by the deviations from standard in his plate. The growing Imperial Hawks fleet, too, began to develop distinctly irregular aspects as trophy ships claimed in battle with corsairs, tribute offerings from defeated civilisations, or voidcraft recovered from space hulks were brought into service.  
  
Fallen from favour in the Imperium’s estimation, an otherwise uncommon practice grew in response to difficulties acquiring materiel and access to facilities through traditional channels. The Legion would claim right of tributary dominion over previously non-compliant void-states when valuable industrial holdings or technical skills were present, pressing them into serfdom to support the Legion’s needs. In the decade before their Primarch’s return, this even on occasion held true in some situations where willing compliance had been achieved, the resources to be gained there being held almost as an assumed right by some of the Legion’s commanders. At times these dominions were secured despite other Imperial forces’ presence and objectives in the region. When Mistral α-Nexus in the Simoon Nebula, whose cluster of resource rich worlds had been brought peacefully into the Imperium by the XVIIth Legion, was suddenly taken by the near unannounced 27th chapter, the matter reached a sufficient head to involve the War Council in its resolution, a situation not helped by their lack of presence to defend their claim.  
  
As one of the few Legions still without a Primarch to champion its cause, fallen from grace, and increasingly withdrawn, the Imperial Hawks looked to themselves alone for support. The internal solidarity of the Imperial Hawks was one positive feature that only seemed to grow more resolute as time passed, though whether this was a factor of their undiscovered Father’s genetic legacy or in response to the hardening attitudes of the rest of the Imperium can’t be known. While widely spread, and at times aggressively competitive, the Imperial Hawk wolf-packs were still able to maintain regular lines of communication with their nearest peers, and against larger threats could come together with surprising efficiency into temporary warfleets. The establishment of a new tributary was also cause for most ‘local’ fleets to draw together, taking advantage of the chance to reorganise and re-equip without drawing the ire of other Imperial bodies. These gatherings additionally served to oversee the formations of new chapter-fleets, with the assembled leaders making determinations on who to raise into their number and which elements of their own forces would be transferred to establish it. This intermixing helped to ensure a continuity of culture and character as the Legion, but perhaps more importantly tied together fleets who might have otherwise grown distant and suspect due to the legionnaires’ insular tendencies.  
  
Contact with the wider Imperium steadily reduced as the Crusade entered its second century, trending towards bare strategic datapacks and status updates, and the areas where they were most active moved further afield from the emerging seats of civilization. Those rare compliance actions fought alongside other Imperial forces became infamous affairs that saw them cripple worlds and break fleets with a brutal efficiency before spiriting away with any materials of use to them.  
  
While speculation, and concern, may have abounded on the end result of this route the Legion found itself on, the discovery of the IVth Primarch in the early M.31 would both answer and derail most such theorising.  
  
  
The Lost Son  
The events surrounding the discovery of each Primarch varied as widely as the worlds where they were found, but for Hanno the Traveler there would be a unique complication holding back his reunification with his sons and the Emperor. As the Great Crusade continued outward from Segmentum Solar along the dominant warp currents, where the most likely concentrations of Human worlds might be found, expeditionary fleets commanders came across a series of stories across far flung worlds that, when taken together, could only point to the presence of one of the Emperor’s missing sons. One that voyaged between the stars. For almost a century after the first tale was encountered, this unknown Primarch, the Lost Son as he came to be recorded, remained ever just beyond reach.  
  
It would be the Emperor himself, guided by prescience or fate’s chance intervention, that finally caught up with the Primarch’s fleet, fighting through warp-squalls on the far edge of Segmentum Pacificus that had erupted as the _Bucephelus_ sought passage to the region. Reunited with his IVth son, the Emperor travelled onboard the Primarch’s own flagship for the journey to Terra, explaining to him the nature of the Imperium and his place within it. Quick witted and widely perceptive, Hanno readily translated the concepts and ideas into parallels with his own void-clan’s experiences, and was by all accounts swift to embrace the Emperor’s grand design.  
  
Compared to many of his brother Primarchs, Hanno spent little time spent with his Father or siblings after his discovery, and still less on Terra. With a long history of leadership in times of peace and war at the head of his clan-fleet, the Emperor apparently saw no need for extended tutelage or shadowing before granting him command of the Imperial Hawks. Here too was there a significant difference from previous occasions, for no call was made to summon the Legion created in his image to him, a swift decision on the Primarch’s own part. Waiting only for his flagship, the _Journey’s End_, and its attendant fleet to be refurbished by the shipwrights of Saturn, the Son of the Stars departed quietly to track down his newly discovered sons in person.  
  
Though often painted as a darkly mercurial figure, prone to unchartable shifts in temper, and as swift to set his course as change it, Hanno was never known to act rashly or with haste. His silver eyes caught every detail and his mind charted the quickest course to his end destination, ever ready to alter his path through changing circumstances. In truth, much of the opinion formed on the Primarch by those who met him only in passing seems to have been invoked from some magnified example of the discomfort felt my many planet-born mortals in the presence of those native to the void, something that in turn may have been likewise true for his sons. His instincts and priorities were born of an environment utterly alien to most, responses and attitude those of an equally different breed of Humanity.  


_Turning Tides_

In his sons the Primarch Hanno saw great potential: for what they could achieve, could become, and in what they represented. But he observed in them also a nature and mindset, wholly familiar, left to run untended and ill maintained, however much they themselves had sought towards a state they could not articulate but knew to be correct in their hearts. Remedying this, before anything else, he saw as his first duty to them and the Imperium.  
  
The network of bonds, ties and histories, good and ill, spread across this sons were nothing new or strange to Hanno’s eyes, entirely familiar from within his own Clan and just as easy for him to track and understand. It was a result of this understanding that led him to begin his odyssey by welding to his fleet the eldest chapters, those who had departed the solar system at the forefront of the Crusade and sired those that came after. Here the leadership principles of the Saragossi Clan-Fleet came to the fore as he first met those created in his image, authority built not on absolute dominance or assumed right of command, but the respect and loyalty of those under him through the undeniable proof of his ability demonstrated time after time. So it was that from the very start a reciprocal bond and understanding between Primarch and Legion existed that eclipsed all those before. Other Legions merely obeyed without question, his sons followed without doubt.  
  
In reorganizing his sons to fit the vision he held for them, Hanno drew on decades of personal command experience, and blended aspects of both the ad-hoc internal developments of the Legion and the methods and structures that the Saragossi had refined across the centuries. The old ways from Terra were assessed and judged on merit, traditions from his own people were carefully selected and adapted to meet new requirements, and with his penetrating insight the Primarch formulated entirely new practises to fill niches otherwise left unfilled. With each new chapter contingent and wolf-pack fleet that was brought into his armada, the Hanno turned the traits that had seen them outcast into strength, and established patterns to reinforce the changes he introduced that would carry down each new generation.  
  
As he travelled, Hanno also undertook efforts to soothe relations with those who his Legion had become estranged from, meeting and fighting alongside a number of his Brothers, and formalising new procedures of resupply with the Departmento Munitorum. Yet he also saw potential, even advantage, in the independence achieved by his sons and sought on how to expand on it. Building of his Legion’s status as outsiders, he reached out and fostered new pacts and agreements with others that found themselves held apart from the wider Imperium. Techpriests and artificer-enclaves marked as heterodox in the eyes of Mars, rogue traders fallen from grace, adepts of Terra run afoul of politics, these and more he offered shelter and patronage in return for their skills, many finding a place within the Legion’s fleets or tributaries.  
  
A worthy epic in its own right, formulated by the remembrancer Xia Tareng into the Astral Cycles, after ten years where they had slowly disappeared from view Hanno brought the full might of the IVth Legion back into the Imperium’s sight. Orbiting the forgeworld of Xana they drew much attention from those who had previously looked on them with concern or distaste, curious to know what influence the Primarch would have wrought, and how much of it would be for the better. Changed, yet still true to who they had been, the black armoured legionaries now titling themselves simply as the Voidfarers completed their resupply before dispersing again to the tides of the warp.  
  
_Predators of the Void_  
The Legion’s return to the forefront of the Great Crusade was greeted with tentative enthusiasm by the War Council, the Divisio Militaris eager to bring the skills and talents they held to bear in a more organised manner. Voidfarers battlegroups began to emerge from the warp with increasing regularity in response to petitions for assistance and cries for aid, appearing unannounced from the warp and swooping upon their targets with little pause. Nurturing closer ties to Imperial Intelligence, they made a return as the thunder-strike of Imperial retribution against pirates and rebels, a force more easily directed at short notice and less likely to leave devastation in their wake. In a mirror to this role they also became the bane of enemy shipping, hunting vulnerable transports and merchantmen with predatory instinct and cutting worlds off from supply or reinforcement. In some cases the Voidfarers even starved civilisations into surrender, ending defiance without the need for ground battle.  
  
The list of compliances listed on the Legion’s rolls or honour still remained among the lowest, even under Hanno’s leadership. For all that it played a part in hundreds of campaigns launched by other forces, by itself the Voidfarers never approached the rate of planetary conquest set by other Legions. Quickly, however, it became apparent that those they did report were being achieved with far cleaner results. The rule of the Phoenix Court was extinguished in a single day, a score of drop-strikes across half a dozen worlds coordinated to wipe out the nobility and military command in a single , shocking the civilisation into surrender. Against the hive-plates of Hephaestus, hundreds of boarding squads repeatedly outmanoeuvred the cybermantic armies set against them through duct-warrens and across scrap-pylons, crippling the unclean industry that sustained the might of the orbitals’ Overseers but leaving intact for later Mechanicum consecration.  
  
Leading from the bridge of the Journey’s End as often as the field of battle, Hanno was ever on the move between his sons’ roaming battlegroups, absorbing and releasing companies from his own command fleet as he saw fit while navigating a private course across the heavens. There had been no effort, or even intent, to remake his sons into something they were not, no reason in his mind to turn them away from the path they excelled on. Perhaps, in retrospect, he understood the Emperor’s wisdom in creating each Legion with its own character and underlying nature better than those who only saw a warband fearfully close to being out of control.  
  
  
Unit and Formation and Structure within the Legion  
For more than a century after its founding the marines of the IVth Legion had continued to operate within the parameters set forth in the Principia Bellicosa, despite a growing difficulty in matching the prescribed organisational and rank structures to the realities of their operation. Unsurprisingly, one of the first changes made by their Primarch when he took command was to largely discard this template in favour of one more suited to his sons’ methods. A mixture of void-clan traditions from many sources, modified Terran practices, and wholly new innovations of the Primarch’s own devising, it represented one of the most extensive sets of reform undertaken by any of the Legiones Astartes, and demonstrated the absolute understanding held by Hanno regarding his Legion. By the time the Voidfarers were resupplying over the forgeworld of Xana, this restructuring had been embraced, not just willingly but eagerly, across all ranks and components, even affecting change on its mortal support elements.  
  
Foundational to the whole exercise was the need to retain and further enable, the factors that brought them success while minimising the impact of those that had been counterproductive to it. Beginning this was a redefining of the company, the term now applying to the full complement of marines based on board a single voidship, led by a Captain who commanded both the warriors and vessel. In this regard the ship and marines would be regarded as a single entity within the Legion, a significant throwback to many of the voidborn cultures it was raised from, with shared formation name, heraldry and history. Support elements, most visibly escorting voidcraft and assault transport wings, would be likewise integrated at the company level instead of being drawn from a common pool. With inherited cultural inertia funnelled ever more tightly, the rites and traditions practiced by the legionnaires on board became condensed at this level more than any other, with the distinct character of the varied companies beginning to stand out all the more.  
  
With allowances for the casualties of war, each ship of the same class was nominally expected to carry the same number of marines, allowing for a swift calculation of formation strength based on fleet composition, though the exact composition of squads was largely left to the Captain’s discretion within the limits of their mandate. Specialists within the Legion, apothecaries, techmarines and the like, occupied a murky area, both part of a company but first of all members of their own brotherhoods beyond the normal structures. This did allow for them to offer counsel to officers in a way that might not have been possible otherwise, elders of the Apothecarium especially coming to be seen as sources of insight for both new recruits and ranking commanders.  
  
After the company the only other recognised formation was the battlegroup. Not a set unit as chapters in other Legions were, though they often persisted largely intact for decades, the term instead applied to any formation operating under independent command, ranging from interdiction patrols with only a pair of strike cruisers to fleets numbering in the score. The most commonly observed examples stood between 750-1500 marines strong, thought depending on the needs of any given mission or campaign, they could be merged or split, and individual companies often moved between them during resupply. Command of a battlegroup lay with a Fleetmaster, selected from the Captains present on the same basis as their own elevation to command. This fluidity of organisation and streamlined command structure exemplified the features that allowed the legion to deploy in such a regularly shifting manner while still retaining high levels of coordination, and made them far more capable of operating effectively alongside other Imperial forces than their reputation might have implied.  
  
Across the Legion’s flesh and blood contingent, specialisation was broadly uncommon at all levels, though all marines were expected to be capable in a range of roles so that a variety of tactical options were retained. For the majority of engagements, the standard line unit was the reaver-pattern assault squad, outfitted for intense bursts of melee combat and close quarters firefights. Well suited to the Legion’s swift style of warfare, easy to maintain or resupply on the move and harking back to the void combat traditions of numerous cultures living beyond the atmospheric boundary, these legionnaires were also in most cases the face of the Legion to outsiders, and informed most of the opinions held regarding them. Though thought of as dishonourable fighters by many of their peers in other Legions, this style of combat was perhaps the oldest within the Voidfarers’ repertoire and existed largely unchanged from the time of the original founding on Terra. If the Legion took askance at the opinions of others, they showed as little outward care of it as any other statement directed towards them.  
  
Tactical support squads were perhaps the second most commonly seen unit type, and played a key role in numerous engagements by providing the bulk of mobile anti-armour firepower. Heavy support infantry was deployed only rarely, and for the most part only in securing beachheads in highly contested landings or forming rearguard echelons. Repeated attempts to expand the use of these heavier weapons in a manner consistent with the Legion’s preferred style of warfare through the use of suspensor webs were held back by the scarcity of the technology and its high maintenance requirements.  
  
With the strong sense of internal cohesion found within companies, the formation of separate elite formations never emerged as they did in some other Legions, who might maintain an entire elite chapter or similar group. Despite this, across companies there were squads, or sometimes individual marines, whose ability did see them receive special recognition and assignment. Foremost among this number were the squads designated karkina. Vanguard fighters with a fearsome reputation that reached past the Legion into the mythos of many Imperial void-crews, they were tasked with shattering any obstacle that might hinder their brothers’ missions. Traditionally equipped with double-handed veletaris-pattern boarding axes and warplate reinforced with void-hardening modifications, they were as adept at cutting through bulkheads and deck plating to bypass enemy strongpoints, as leaving trails of dismembered enemy warriors in their wake. Much like the Legion’s specialists, the honour-titled squads and individuals offered ties and bonds between companies, and often were involved in the rituals conducted between them.  
  
Armour remained, understandably, rare in light of the Legion’s combat preferences, with only the land speeder seeing regular, favoured for use in flanking manoeuvrers during planetside engagements. The development of internally deployed sub-patterns by the Legion’s techmarines and artificers was an ongoing project that carried Hanno’s personal approval, with the greatest success being the argo-pattern, built with an extended chassis and running board to act as a squad level transport for redeployment on a scale or in situations inappropriate for storm eagle or stormbird use.  
  
Conversely, with boarding and planetary assault deployments forming keystones in the Legion’s combat doctrine, a wide range of strike craft in large numbers were present across all companies. The iconic stormbird and storm eagle transports retained their long held dominance, supported by legionnaire piloted strike craft including the fire raptor, xiphon and primaris-lightning. The Legion had also become closely involved with the development and testing of several advanced drop pod designs over the course of the Crusade, one of the few areas of successful ongoing cooperation between them and other Imperial organisations. Strong proponents of the dreadclaw-pattern drop pod, whose aggressive machine spirit was well regarded by many companies, by the time other Legions were receiving their first shipments of these craft, they were already common among the IVth. When the kharybdis assault claw came into production, they were embraced with a similar enthusiasm, extensive retrofitting of launch bays taking place on nearly all larger ship classes.  
  
_Legion Hierarchy_  
As mentioned elsewhere, Hanno formalised a leadership culture radically different from that employed by his fellow Primarchs, and indeed would most likely never have been allowed to continue under any other of them. Promotion at any level lay not only with the demonstration of combat ability and strategic skill, but the respect of those who would be led, and holding that rank was an exercise in continuously demonstrating the worthiness of that approval. This had informed the method in how he first approached his sons and reformed his Legion, demonstrating the proof of his right of command in the tradition of his own people. As the Sigillite himself remarked, _“No Legion rewards with such conviction or punishes with such disappointment”_.  
  
In direct result of this strategy was a drive that propelled so many of the Voidfarers’ officers, and a competitive spirit between legionnaires that was only tempered by the tightness of the bonds between them. Indeed, despite the cold aggression so many of the legionnaires displayed in combat, discipline was rarely an issue and almost always resolved in short order at the squad level.  
  
Given the unique organizational structure of the Legion, which on paper listed only two set ranks and a further two provisional one, and even more so with its fluid application, there might have been expected a degree of conflict over internal authority, yet here too Hanno selected and alloyed a combination of practices to ensure orderly conduct. Building on the foundation of leadership selection, when officers of equal rank met deference was always to the one who had held the position longest and thus could be looked to as more demonstrably able and experienced. This can be seen further in the ranks of Lieutenant and Lieutenant Captain which were held on an as-needed basis within companies and battlegroups, with authority to act on their commander’s behalf during split deployment actions, most commonly boarding or drop assaults where the ship or fleet remained in active void combat. Many of the Legion’s officers of note were repeatedly granted this authority in their earlier careers and were promoted on the back of their successes, making the position something of a training ground before full elevation.  
  
_Armorial Conventions_  
Up until the arrival of their Primarch and his assumption of command, the Legion retained near-standard markings as set forth in the Principia Bellicosa, only the incorporation of stylised hawk imagery into its chapter iconography and Legion specific campaign markings deviating from it.  
  
Following Hanno’s arrival there was a widespread shift in unit and rank markings, both to represent the new organizational structure and in the adoption of numerous forms of ship-glyph that were inherited from his own people and those recruited from. Functionally indecipherable to outsiders, the established forms were in fact highly efficient in supplying specific tactical detail between legionnaires. In the same manner, company level iconography rapidly branched out into new directions, much of it with no specific meaning outside the voidborn communities or those with long-term experience with them, but always ultimately relating to their voidship.  
  
Across the varied companies, one mark did serve to unify all. The guiding star heraldry of Hanno himself was recorded as the official seal of the Legion, present on every marine, ship and banner in gleaming white.  
  
The shift to a black warplate that occurred simultaneously to the Primarch’s reordering of the Legion, however, cannot easily be traced to any specific tradition inherited by them through recruitments or on the part of Hanno’s own fragment of voidborn civilisation. Some have tried to apply the concept of passive camouflage in the limited visibility of boarding combat, or connecting it to the peculiar alloys of the Primarch’s flagship, but in all likelihood the answer will remain another of the small mysteries forever surrounding the Legiones Astartes.  
  
  
War Disposition  
As of the late Crusade era, the Legion stood approximately 120,000 strong, the majority dispersed in battlegroups across the Imperium’s border regions with perhaps a tenth in the immediate vicinity of its stellar holdings, either undergoing resupply or guarding against known threats. At this time Hanno personally was leading the largest concentration of these fleets, alongside Basilikon Astra detachments from Ryza and Accatran, in an ongoing campaign against Greenskin freebooters and Eldar corsairs in the vicinity of Nocturn, with almost 10,000 of his sons present across the sector.  
  
Any consideration of the Legion’s strength must include consideration of fleet assets, which exceeded any rival by a significant margin. At least 750 cruisers of various class carried the icon of a Voidbearers company, along with more than 100 battle barges of which the Journey’s End was the greatest. Including escorts and the plethora of essentially unique near-capital or otherwise ungradable voidships they possessed, this rose to in excess of 2500 combat vessels. Further, this discounted the myriad sworn ships that escorted transports between its holding and battlegroups on campaign, or the vessels under rogue traders who had come under their sway. In the event that the Legion was ever given cause, it would be capable of gathering a warfleet exceeding any other two Legions combined, with a capacity for destruction held back only by the disproportionate ratio of mid-tier capital ships over heavier battleships. As it was, this scale of deployment had never been called for, and while not actively hidden, the spread of smaller scale fleets over wide stretches of the galaxy and limited knowledge of the Legion’s strength left many with a mistakenly underestimated view of the overall fleet strength available to them.


End file.
